---
id: share-remote-file
title: Share Remote PDF file
---

When sharing a pdf file with base64, there are two current problems.

1. On WhatsApp base64 wont be recognized => nothing to share
2. In the GmailApp the file extension is wrong (.dat).

Therefore we use this "workaround" in order to handle pdf sharing for iOS Apps to mentioned Apps

1. Install react-native-fetch-blob
2. Set a specific path in the RNFetchBlob configurations
3. Download the PDF file to temp device storage
4. Share the response's path() of the downloaded file directly

Code:

```jsx
static sharePDFWithIOS(fileUrl, type) {
  let filePath = null;
  let file_url_length = fileUrl.length;
  const configOptions = {
    fileCache: true,
    path:
      DIRS.DocumentDir + (type === 'application/pdf' ? '/SomeFileName.pdf' : '/SomeFileName.png') // no difference when using jpeg / jpg / png /
  };
  RNFetchBlob.config(configOptions)
    .fetch('GET', fileUrl)
    .then(async resp => {
      filePath = resp.path();
      let options = {
        type: type,
        url: filePath // (Platform.OS === 'android' ? 'file://' + filePath)
      };
      await Share.open(options);
      // remove the image or pdf from device's storage
      await RNFS.unlink(filePath);
    });
}
```

Nothing to do on Android. You can share the pdf file with base64

```jsx
static sharePDFWithAndroid(fileUrl, type) {
  let filePath = null;
  let file_url_length = fileUrl.length;
  const configOptions = { fileCache: true };
  RNFetchBlob.config(configOptions)
    .fetch('GET', fileUrl)
    .then(resp => {
      filePath = resp.path();
      return resp.readFile('base64');
    })
    .then(async base64Data => {
      base64Data = `data:${type};base64,` + base64Data;
      await Share.open({ url: base64Data });
      // remove the image or pdf from device's storage
      await RNFS.unlink(filePath);
    });
}
```
